Defaulting a column to 'now' - Mailing list pgsql-sql

From Ken Winter
Subject Defaulting a column to 'now'
Date
Msg-id 003501c600d9$b799a1c0$6603a8c0@kenxp
Whole thread Raw
Responses Re: Defaulting a column to 'now'
Re: Defaulting a column to 'now'
Re: Defaulting a column to 'now'
List pgsql-sql

How can a column’s default be set to ‘now’, meaning ‘now’ as of when each row is inserted?

 

For example, here’s a snip of DDL:

 

create table personal_data (…

effective_date_and_time TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE not null default 'now',…

 

The problem is, when PostgreSQL processes this DDL, it interprets the ‘now’ as the timestamp when the table is created, so that the tables definition reads as if the DDL were:

 

effective_date_and_time TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE not null default ' 2005-12-14 11:00:16.749616-06 ',

 

so all of the newly inserted rows get assigned effective_date_and_time = ' 2005-12-14 11:00:16.749616-06 ', which in addition to being wrong leads to uniqueness constraint violations.

 

~ TIA

~ Ken

 

pgsql-sql by date:

Previous
From: Michael Fuhr
Date:
Subject: Re: Finding out to which table a specific row belongs
Next
From: Tom Lane
Date:
Subject: Re: Defaulting a column to 'now'